Herman-Bavinck-Common-Grace

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60 CALVIN THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL be brought to its highest revelation. That situation will again return in which we serve God freely and happily, without compulsion or fear, simply out of love, and in harmony with our true nature. That is the genuine religio naturalis [natural religion]. In order to restore such religion, faith has for a time become a religio Christiana, Erlösungsreligion [Christian religion, a religion of salvation]. By means of this organic way of relating nature and grace, the Reformation in principle overcame the mechanical juxtaposition and dualistic worldview of the Catholic Church. And thereby, too, the significance of the cosmos increases greatly. It still represents that primary, original, and natural state that the Christian religion, the foedus gratiae, leads back to. While it is true that the world has been corrupted by sin, it nevertheless remains the work of the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth. Of his own will he maintains it by his covenant, and by his gratia communis he powerfully opposes the destructive might of sin. He fills the hearts of men with nourishment and joy and does not leave himself without a witness among them. He pours out upon them numberless gifts and benefits. Families, races, and peoples he binds together with natural love and affection. He allows societies and states to spring up that the citizens might live in peace and security. Wealth and well-being he grants them that the arts and sciences can prosper. And by his revelation in nature and history he ties their hearts and consciences to the invisible, suprasensible world and awakens in them a sense of worship and virtue. The entirety of the rich life of nature and society exists thanks to God's common grace. But why should he continue to preserve such a sinful world by a special action of his grace? Does he squander his gifts? Is he acting purposelessly? Is it not because natural life, in all its forms has value in his eyes in spite of sin's corruption? The love of family and kin, societal and political life, art and science are all in themselves objects of his divine good pleasure. He delights also in these works of his hands. They all together constitute, not in their mode of being but in their essence, the original order that God called into being at creation and that he still preserves and maintains, sin notwithstanding. Contempt for this divine order of creation is thus illegitimate; it flies in the face of experience and conflicts with Scripture. Here all separatism or asceticism is cut off at the roots. All world-flight is a repudiation of the first article of our Apostolic Creed. Christ indeed came to destroy the works of the devil. But more than that, he came to restore the works of the Father and so to renew man according to the image of him who first created man. Hereby we have not denied the serious character of sin. Sin is certainly not a substance but a quality, not materia [matter] but forma [form]. Sin
COMMON GRACE 61 is not the essence of things but rather cleaves to the essence; it is a privatio [privation], albeit actuosa [active], and to that extent accidental, having penetrated from the outside like death. Hence sin can be separated and removed from reality. The world is and remains susceptible of purification and redemption. Its essence can be rescued, and its original state can return. Even so, sin is a power, a principle, that has penetrated deeply into all forms of created life. The organism of the world itself has been affected. Left to itself, sin would have made desolate and destroyed all things. But God has interposed his grace and his covenant between sin and the world. By his common grace he restrains sin with its power to dissolve and destroy. Yet common grace is not enough. It compels but it does not change; it restrains but does not conquer. Unrighteousness breaks through its fences again and again. To save the world, nothing less was needed than the immeasurable greatness of the divine power, the working of his great might which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places (Eph. 1:19, 20). To save the world required nothing less than the fullness of his grace and the omnipotence of his love. The Christian religion does not, therefore, have the task of creating a new supernatural order of things. It does not intend to institute a totally new, heavenly kingdom such as Rome intends in the church and the Anabaptists undertook at Munster. Christianity does not introduce a single substantial foreign element into the creation. It creates no new cosmos but rather makes the cosmos new. It restores what was corrupted by sin. It atones the guilty and cures what is sick; the wounded it heals. Jesus was anointed by the Father with the Holy Spirit to bring good tidings to the afflicted, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive and the opening of prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and to comfort those who mourn (Isa. 61:1, 2). He makes the blind to see, the lame to walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised, and the gospel is preached to the poor (Matt. 11:5). Jesus was not a new lawgiver; he was not a statesman, poet, or philosopher. He was Jesus—that is, Savior. But he was that totally and perfectly, not in the narrow Roman Catholic, Lutheran, or Anabaptist sense but in the full, deep, and broad Reformed sense of the word. Christ did not come just to restore the religio-ethical life of man and to leave all the rest of life undisturbed, as if the rest of life had not been corrupted by sin and had no need of restoration. No, the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the communion of the Holy Spirit extend even as far as sin has corrupted. Everything that is sinful, guilty, unclean, and full of woe is, as such and for that very
Page 1 and 2: HERMAN BAVINCK'S "COMMON GRACE" A T
Page 3 and 4: COMMON GRACE 37 traditions are hist
Page 5 and 6: COMMON GRACE 39 Their stiffness of
Page 7 and 8: COMMON GRACE 41 grace each flow on
Page 9 and 10: COMMON GRACE 43 The essence of Isra
Page 11 and 12: COMMON GRACE 45 sprung from Greece.
Page 13 and 14: COMMON GRACE 47 indwelling of the S
Page 15 and 16: COMMON GRACE 49 Both of these chara
Page 17 and 18: COMMON GRACE 51 the borders of hist
Page 19 and 20: COMMON GRACE 53 Both the Socinians
Page 21 and 22: COMMON GRACE 55 Bible. The doctrine
Page 23 and 24: COMMON GRACE 57 nature and grace is
Page 25: COMMON GRACE 59 of man. AU men are
Page 29 and 30: COMMON GRACE 63 to remain in the vo
Page 31: COMMON GRACE 65 Consequently, theol

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